Yay!
Another chapter up! Woo hoo! Three days in a row! :D
Alright folks, here we are... finally at the climax! Thank you once more to all my reviewers and I just thought I should do a quick reminder, since I haven't in a while...
I do NOT own these characters or any of the plot that goes to X-men Origins: Wolverine! Shocking! I know! lol

So, without further ado...


A Brother's Bond: Rage


"Colonel,"

Kayla Silverfox took a step forward towards Stryker, her weak voice asking hopefully for his attention.

"Not now Kayla," Stryker responded roughly.

"I've done everything you asked. My sister. You said if I helped you'd let her go," Kayla pleaded desperately. Stryker turned to face her with a sigh.

"It's not as simple as that, her mutation is unique, quite beautiful. We just need a little more time to analyze it, that's all," Stryker responded calmly, in his reassuring voice.

"You let him go..."

Victor Creed's low voice resounded in the room, effectively interrupting the conversation. He launched himself from off a near cat walk and landed with a heavy thud, to gracefully crouch on his feet. He stood up slowly and stared menacingly towards his employer.

"Victor please," Stryker stated, seeing the anger mounting in Creed's eyes. Victor stormed forward in long, powerful strides.
"You can't beat him!" Stryker declared.

"Give me the andamanitium!" Victor growled in reply. If he couldn't beat James as he was now, he knew for certain he could beat him after he too had gotten the procedure.

"The tests came back-" Stryker began, with a face and tone that smacked of excuses.

"We had a deal!" Victor roared, his patience having officially been spent.

"You never could have survived the operation," Stryker argued, staring Victor down strictly. That caught Creed's attention. It struck at his pride too. Declaring that James, the runt, could survive worse than he, the first born, was a direct insult. Victor tilted his head slightly to the side, baring his teeth and glaring at the Colonel.

"I can survive anything he can..." Victor rumbled darkly.

Stryker shook his head. "No you can't"

There was a smoldering silence that filled the air. Victor's eyes pierced directly into his employers in deep deliberation of what was happening here. Was this... betrayal...?

"Patience, your time will come," Styker promised in that same, infuriatingly calm voice of his.

Rage. That's all Creed felt in this moment. This was Stryker's game and Victor realized in that moment, that he and James had both been playing at it. This was for Stryker's satisfaction alone.

"He's using us," Kayla spoke up, saying the exact words Victor had just concluded himself. Rage. Pure, violent, rage.

When Kayla tried rushing past, Victor could barely refrain himself any longer. Such anger building up inside him drove his instincts to do one thing and one thing only. He needed to KILL.

He snagged hold of her throat and hoisted her off the ground with one powerful arm. A scream of terror erupted from her throat, the sound glorious to his ears. With this wicked turn of events having even played back on him, Victor could hold back his frustrations no longer. Months of work, wasted on a serum he was never meant to have. Never could ever have. Kayla would be the first to pay, simply because she'd always hacked him off, and then Stryker would be next...

Slowly but surely, Creed lowered Kayla closer to his face.
"How about this time... you die for real?" he hissed in her ear.

"VICTOR!"

The familiar scream snagged Victor's attention immediately. He craned his head to see that James had indeed returned and he was looking as furious as ever. Priorities had now taken a different shift. Dropping the woman, Creed moved to face James full on.

Round Three.

...

As if the first fight with James and his adamanitium body hadn't been bad enough, Victor found himself completely being creamed this time. Pain erupted through his senses as once again the three sharp metal claws ripped into his body, delivering a pounding that could have made any man whimper and cower in submission.

But not Creed.

He took each and every beating with full certainty that he was getting exactly what he deserved. When in the end, the two brother's brawl brought them smashing through a window to fall down below onto a large garbage platform, Victor wheezed out a bitter chuckle of defeat. James's six claws were still plunged deep within his sides, but Victor embraced it. He embraced the senselessness of his actions and wallowed in his own misery. He embraced the months of work that in the end he had done for nothing, and he embraced the fact that his own blood brother had been viciously tricked, tortured, and strung out by a mad man of science, and he had allowed it.

He'd failed.

The one duty in which Creed had always told James was most important, he himself had forsaken. Brothers were meant to protect one another... What was his life worth living all these years for anyway if Victor's only remaining family member hated him? What was any of it worth?

James retracted one hand set of blades from Creed's body only to point them up at Victor's neck. Yes, it was inevitable. James had taken all the damage in the world a man could possibly take, and only grown stronger from it. James had outgrown his older brother, and in the process achieved his full potential.

"Feels good, doesn't it? All that rage?" Victor choked out through the blood he felt gurgling in his throat.

His body was working double time to maximize healing in the areas that needed it most, leaving Creed drained of energy, but he still managed a weak smile. James just stared at him, brows drawn down low in an angry arch, golden eyes shimmering out from under them with uncertainty.

"Do it," Victor beckoned.

"Logan!" came the sudden cry from Kayla. She had run outside and stood against the rail of the building above, staring down upon them.
"You're not an animal!" she called down to Jimmy.

"Oh yes you are," Victor objected, just praying that his taunt would force James to do what was best for the both of them.

If anyone could kill him, it would be James, and in this moment, Victor welcomed the idea of death. He'd lived a long... drawn out... painful life. He'd done James the worst injustices imaginable, and if he died now all debts would be settled. A nearly unbearable wave of depression and hopelessness had over come him, and Victor just wished for it to be over and done with. His life was meaningless. There was no point to anything anymore.

"Do it. Finish it," he hissed out, barely a whisper.

James' eyes flickered with indecision for a long moment that seemed to last forever. Finally, he sighed, closing his eyes and retracting the set of claws placed under Victor's throat. Creed stared up at his brother in shock and disappointment. He didn't deserve life! Why had James spared him? After all the wrongs that were done, why give mercy now...?

And then, with a deep breath, James delivered a fast, hard punch to his face.

Blackness took him.